Could Winx have won the Melbourne Cup? Bowman thinks so

Could Winx have been the Cup queen? Or beaten the English on their own turf? We’ll never know now.

Jockey Hugh Bowman leaves Winx in the mounting yard after trackwork at Rosehill yesterday. Picture: Toby Zerna

Two things will remain unknown. Firstly, whether Winx could have won the Melbourne Cup. Hugh Bowman says she would have run rings around ’em if she’d been taken to Flemington in the Novembers of 2015 and 2016. And secondly, we’ll never know if she could have gone to England to pad up at Royal Ascot and do what all red-blooded Australians would have loved her to do. Beat the Poms in their own backyard.

Chris Waller, Bowman and Winx’s emotional and fiercely protective trainer, wants the seven-year-old’s longevity to be her legacy when she gallops into retirement in Saturday afternoon’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes. The full house sign will be plonked on the footpath out the front, 42,000 patrons will be saluting and screaming and weeping at Royal Randwick, and then the show will be over.

We know what we know. She’s a good ’un. But there’s a couple of itches that have never been scratched. The first Tuesday in November and an international raid.

Bowman says Winx may have grabbed two straight Melbourne Cups in the earliest years of her four-year unbeaten streak. But the cost may have been a career that burned as brightly as one of Jack Kerouac’s fabulous yellow roman candles — but just as briefly. The reward in treating her with caution, and steering her clear of lung-busting distances, has been long-term dominance and no discernible dip in her powers. She’s thundering home. For bowing out on top, it takes some beating.

“We’re so proud of what she’s been able to achieve and the fact we’re going in now, pretty much four years into a winning streak, and the fact I can honestly say she’s going as well as she’s ever been in those four years — that says a lot to her constitution,” Bowman said after trackwork at Rosehill Gardens yesterday.

“And it says a lot to the management of Chris Waller, and his discipline. To not just go for the extra run here and there. I have no doubt she could have won another five or six or seven Group Is in that time, easily, if Chris had decided to go one or two extra runs in each preparation. We won’t ever know.”

Without being prompted, Bowman added: “One of the most common questions I’m asked is, ‘would she win the Melbourne Cup?’ I doubt she would now. She’d be carrying too much weight. But I think certainly in 2015 and 2016, had she have gone in the race, I believe she would have won it. But would she still be here now if Chris and the owners had asked that of her? Two miles would probably be beyond her distance. But I honestly believe she would have competed and won those two races if she had been in them.”

Michelle Payne’s historic Melbourne Cup triumph on Prince Of Penzance in 2015 came in a time of 3min 23.15sec for the 3200m journey. When Winx won the Cox Plate that year, she covered 2040m in 2:02.98. At that same thundering rate in the Cup, she would’ve had 1:21.17 to negotiate the final 1160 metres. Extremely do-able. She might have romped home. Put it this way — when Winx won last year’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes, she covered her last 1000m in 56.84sec.

Then again, she might have blown a gasket. Or worse. Mercifully, we never found out the damage it might have done. No Melbourne Cup for her. No Royal Ascot. Nothing but the glory of her domestic record. A 33rd for the road tomorrow.

“Do I have a regret that we’ve never taken on other horses in other parts of the world? Well, yes, of course I do,” Waller said in a recent interview with Racing NSW. “But at the same time, we’ve concentrated on her longevity and that’s why she’s getting the fan base that she has now. To me, that’s much more important than going at loggerheads with other horses.

“Of her era, she’s beaten everything that’s come to Australia to take her on. She’s beaten everything from Australia. She doesn’t do it by a length; she does it with authority. I think she could beat the best horses in the world more often than not — but it might break her heart. She’s one of those horses that puts everything she has into it. Whatever she has to do.

“Do we want heartbroken horses when they’re three or do we want longevity? You guys are getting longevity and I hope you’re enjoying it.”

Bowman added: “It’s all very well appreciating the attention she attracts here in Australia but she attracts exactly the same attention all over the world.”

Waller was asked how Winx should be remembered. “How good she’s been from one race to another is one thing, but the longevity really is another,” her said. “A fairytale is only a few days away.”